Traffic violations represent a significant hazard to public safety. These violations include running red lights, running stop signs and speeding, among others. Deterring traffic violations could significantly improve public safety. In addition, citations issued to traffic violators could enhance municipal revenue.
For example, violators who run red lights represent a particular danger to the public. Running red lights can lead to accidents. These accidents can lead to further traffic delays. Moreover, these accidents can lead to large property damages, medical bills, and loss of life.
However, many red light violations go undetected. As many as one percent of vehicles may violate a red light. In a large municipality, as many 20,000 cars may traverse an intersection in any one day. Therefore, as many as 200 violations per intersection may occur in any given day.
Not only does the number of red light violations represent a significant danger to the public, failure to issue citations associated with these violations represents a significant revenue loss to the municipality. Citations issued to traffic law violators are typically a significant revenue stream in many municipalities. A large number of undetected violations means a large number of citations are not written. However, many typical methods for detecting and issuing citations would be cost prohibitive.
Furthermore, evidence of violations is often qualitative. For example, a person running a red light may be cited by an officer for that violation. The evidence of a violation is the witnessing of the act by the officer. Alternately, if the traffic violation were to result in an accident, the evidence may be limited to the perception of the witnesses or participants. As such, many violators in their defense may call into question the recall of the officer or witnesses. Moreover, in the case of the officer, the officer may have a significant number of cases and recall of many of these cases may be impractical.
As such, many typical methods for detecting and citing traffic violators suffer from deficiencies in both detecting violations and providing evidence of the violations. Many other problems and disadvantages of the prior art will become apparent to one skilled in the art after comparing such prior art with the present inventions as described herein.